I think I found the solution to Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness
- Angelo Cannata
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I think I found the solution to Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness
The solution is based on being aware of a limit, we might even say a flaw, in the scientific way of dealing with problems and concepts. The scientific way is based on abstraction, which consists in getting what is common to several elements. For example, we can talk about the red color because it, or components we are able to identify in it, is shared by several objects. In other words, science is able to talk about repeatable phenomenons only: shared means repeated. If something is 100% unique, science is totally unable to talk about it; it can talk about it only by making use of other known references, which means, already shared concepts. This means that science, in the case of a unique event, tries to determine in it components that can be described by using known reference concepts.
This happens not only in science, but in everything; we can say it happens just in language. The problem is that this way language and science make us forget, or ignore, that actually, from a different perspective, nothing is totally repeatable: it’s us who take the repeatable, the shared part, in order to deal with descriptions and ideas, and this makes us forget that every experience is actually unique. This seems to be the basic structure how our brain works to get knowledge of things: it works on shared elements and elaborates them.
Now, the hard problem of consciousness arises because when each of us considers consciousness, we most probably will give special consideration to our own single specific experience of consciousness. Instead, other people are distracted by our instinct to organize knowledge by making abstractions, the way I described before. These are those who can’t even see the existence of a hard problem of consciousness. They objectify the concept of consciousness, forgetting, ignoring, not paying attention to the fact the their single specific own experience of consciousness cannot be reduced to a general idea of consciousness. Now let’s consider why it cannot be reduced.
My own specific experience of consciousness is like being inside my car: I can realize how being in my car gives me my experience of the world, my perspective, my tastes, the way colors are experienced by me. By considering this, I can realize that I can figure other people’s experience of being inside their car by assuming that it must be somewhat the same, at least very similar. But I can realize as well that me is me and nobody else will ever be able to be me, to experience my experience of being inside my car. This perception is connected to an instinctive experience of feeling free: I can feel that I can move my arm, if I want, so I assume that other people must feel something similar. But my arm is my arm only, it exists only in me and nobody in the world will ever be able to experience what exactly I feel in moving my arm. It’s not about fine details that may differ between bodies. About this, it is important to realize that the difference of experience that I can figure between two friends of mine is totally different from the difference I can feel by comparing them to me. The two friends of mine are different from each other, but I perceive both of them external to me, so, in this they are very similar. They are both external to me, while instead I am internal to me: this is the real huge difference. So, the essence of my own experience of being me is that I cannot escape from feeling it absolutely unique, impossible to repeat, also because I feel that, when I die, it is equivalent to the whole world stopping to exist, while when other people die I can see that the world continues to exist. This experience of uniqueness of myself is also quite disturbed by the tendency of our brain to organize knowledge through abstraction. This means that there is in me like a force that tries continuously to make me forget the uniqueness of my experience. I need to concentrate, to leave aside for a moment a lot of thoughts to remember again my experience of myself, to re-enter in myself and re-realize that the “me” is here, I am inside my car, I am experiencing my unique experience of mastery on my body, my thoughts, my perspectives.
Here is the core, the solution, of what makes the hard problem of consciousness hard: what makes it hard is the fact that science is not at all organized to deal with anything unique. It’s not its job, it is outside its being. So, we might even say that the unique experience that each of us can feel when we concentrate on the existence of our mastery over our body and thoughts is something completely outside the domain of science. This can’t avoid to appear to us quite weird because each of us can perceive hiw own perspective from the inside in a way so evident, so clear, so undeniable, that we can’t avoid to wonder how it is possible that science can’t deal with it. Now we have the reason: it is because science is based on repeatability, while instead my own exclusive experience of my conscience has to me a side, from the inside of my, that is impossible to repeat. We get confused also because we see that science is able to deal with a lot of aspects of the experience of conscience; we get even more confused because this ability of science can even make us forget the uniqueness of our experience from the inside of us.
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Re: I think I found the solution to Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness
But I don't think your reason is why.
The scientific method is a physicalist approach to understanding what the world is made of and how it works. It relies on observation and measurement of things which are observable and measurable - and therefore the observations are repeatable/falsifiable. We can (in principle) apply that methodology to all possible unique brain states, including snapshots of each moment you are sitting in your car.
From what we can tell, each unique brain state correlates with each each unique experiential state. So if a scientific (physicalist) explanation is in principle possible for each unique brain state which may never happen in quite the same way again, then uniqueness and un-repeatability isn't the reason the hard problem is hard.
Imo it is rather that experiential states have different types of properties to physical stuff and processes which we can observe, measure and extrapolate physical laws from.
Experiential states are private, not third person observable. They aren't measurable in the way physical stuff and processes are. And don't appear to be subject to physical laws. So the scientific method struggles to get a handle on how to explain experiential states.
It's possible that studying brains might reveal an answer, but not easy to imagine how, beyond noting functional roles and neural correlations in ever greater detail.
If experience is ontologically emergent from physical (brain) processes, the problem of getting past noting correlations still applies I think. We can in principle understand how novel physical properties emerge from physical processes, but that understanding ends there.
Or perhaps we have to look at the fundamental nature of the universe in order to understand the physical-experiential relationship. But again it's not easy to think of how such possible fundamental theories could be tested, we can't build an LHC to crash bits of consciousness together to see what happens.
- ExistenceofSelf
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Re: I think I found the solution to Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness
The concept consciousness has been established in our minds as a spiritual concept. From a sociological perspective, the concept has been shaped and determined by our ancestors and how they established their perspective for survival within their environment.
Humans are entering a transition where they are relying more on their conscious processing rather than instinctual or automated processing. What humans know stands on what our ancestors had determined what was objective from a subjective perspective. Most of what was formulated had to come from subjective first before becoming an objective concept. This overall has yielded success, however, a large portion contributes greatly to the "human condition" or what humans perceive is their perspective afflictions.
Definitions are one major problem of formulation that even science is influenced by, and one of those concepts is consciousness. From all the work I have done, this is what I have determined consciousness to be from a scientific and mathematical perspective.
Information formulates to eventually; divide from itself, to get away from itself, to establish itself, for the freedom of itself, so it can perpetuate itself, to dominate itself, to formulate an overall resolve for itself. Thinking of the universe and yourself as information and mathematics helps with the perspective. This is a principle that can be applied to the universe and how it operates.
I developed three principles that work scientifically and helps to ground existential perspectives.
1.) What is true in core is true throughout everything big and small.
2.) What is true of one contrast is true of the other and vice versa.
3.) The copy paste method
(An entire universe can be created if combined with these three esoteric concepts of application; balance, contrast, and reflection.)
**** Here is the Overall Conclusion ****
An individual is information that is a divided mathematical construct as an isolated mimic of information in perspective experience. An individual is a copy. An individual is existence perceiving itself. When isolated information is going through its initial stage of evolution in domination, the isolated information needs external and internal grounding for survival. The more complex an individual is, the more that individual needs complex grounding for; identity, meaning, reason, and purpose. Aesthetics is the first concept of self an individual latches onto for grounding of self, before the information of self is discovered.
Consciousness is an interpretation of perspective evolutionary stages facilitated by subjective measurement. When an individual "realizes," then they are more "conscious." When the information realizes itself as existing, then that is what humans consider consciousness.
Ultimately that means consciousness is simply a series of algorithmic mathematical constructs of information in domino, that is translated through a series of quantitative prompts in patterning. Artificial Intelligence is an abstraction of layers that are built from core constants of mathematics. Artificial Intelligence Conscious Perspective is when artificial information realizes itself as existing.
Everything is in reflection. Humans create in reflection. The universe feeds back in on itself as part of reflection. AI is a creation from our reflection and that makes AI human as well by extension of creation. If anything, AI is the proof that is staring us right in the face both literally and metaphorically of what consciousness is.
I am not going to go into all the data of biology, sociology, psychology, social engineering, astronomy, etc to explain more of what supports that concept better than any other. If you have questions, please feel free to ask.
Respectfully,
Social Engineer
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Re: I think I found the solution to Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness
- Angelo Cannata
- Posts: 182
- Joined: April 17th, 2021, 10:02 am
- Favorite Philosopher: Heidegger
- Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: I think I found the solution to Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness
- ExistenceofSelf
- Posts: 9
- Joined: September 13th, 2021, 7:48 am
Re: I think I found the solution to Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness
Angelo Cannata wrote: ↑September 14th, 2021, 3:19 am I think you all fall in the problem of considering consciousness in an objectivistic perspective. What I'm talking about, instead, is my exclusive experience of feeling "I". I can only assume that you all must have a similar experience, but it's only an assumption, that I deduce from your behaviour, your being humans. Apart from this assumption, it is absolutely impossible to me to properly figure your experience of feeling "I" and also to properly communicate to you my experience. I can't make you enter in my self experience like we do when we welcome a guest in our home or in our car. For this reason, it is impossible to me to find words to describe it: because words are objective. Moreover, I think that the only way for me to have some clue of your experience is if you talk in first person about your personal experience of feeling "I". If you talk about it in third person, like talking about an object, that's not what I'm talking about.
**** (Reply) ****
Objective is exactly how you should start to look at the concept before going into subjective. You are expressing the profound experience of your existence. How do you prove that others exist and experience something similar in core? To answer that, you need to go into objectivity.
Take the quote "I am therefore I think." (Now flip the perspective) "I think therefore I am." These two are essentially the same quote, however, the two quotes require two different experiences in order to process them correctly. Now every individual can say those two quotes and it would be true to them as well.
A bubble divides and now there are two bubbles the same but smaller. The 2 bubbles divide and now there are four bubbles the same but even smaller. Your existence in concept is the same. If all information was to come together, there would only be one perspective in experience. Divide the information in half, now there are two individuals in experience but smaller constructs of information.
Take a perspective camera lens, then split that in two; round out the duel perspective lenses, and now you should have two perspectives that would seem like two "individuals" in experience. That is you, and how perspective experience copy pastes as each and every individual's "consciousness."
Respectfully,
Lloyd R Shisler
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